


Anniversary

by alianora



Category: Roswell (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imaginary aliens had lead her here, after all, to real aliens, and a man who swore crankily at the coffee machine every morning in a threadbare pair of boxer shorts</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nikiness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikiness/gifts).



 

In a large city, on a busy corner, late one cold night, stood a young woman who had long red hair (it had last been blonde almost two years ago. She had been feeling nostalgic). She held a battered guitar case loosely in one gloved hand and had her other tucked into her pocket. Her hat was pulled firmly down over her hair, so only wisps of red could be seen curling out of the bottom and trailing over the neck of her thick jacket, and her breath steamed in the cold air as she tilted her head back to look up at the few stars she could see overhead. She had to strain to make them out through the light pollution, but eventually she found she could pick out the few she knew by name. Without meaning to, she let her eyes drift to a small star that was barely seen as much as felt as a star, but she shook her head when she caught herself straining to see it past the lights of the city.

It had been ten years, really, but she still found that she could find it. No matter where in the US they were and no matter the time of year, she could always find that dim little star that had taken her best friend and her best friend's husband away.

It was a beautiful night, and as she looked upwards, the young woman whose name at one point had been Maria DeLuca closed her eyes and made a wish. A wish for the girl who had stepped bravely onto a strange little ship with her head held high and her fingers wrapped tightly in her husband's. She had turned before the door closed, and she had waved to Maria, a smile flashing over her small face, and Maria had known that Liz was excited to be going. To be leaving Earth and it's stupid, senseless craving for capturing those who were different.

That had been the last time she had answered to Maria.

They had technically changed their names when they first left, cautioning each other about being followed and too easily spotted, but it still felt like a game until Max, Isabel, and Michael's people had found them again, wanting to take them away from it. Wanting to take Max away from it and put him in a crown or whatever odd royalty rituals their planet had. Max had, of course, refused to go without Liz. Maria had no interest in going but had bitten it down, because she didn't want to be left behind either, and although Michael talked a lot about it at first, she had walked in to see him sitting by the window late one night, and he told her he had only ever wanted a place to belong. Not a whole planet. He didn't want to leave Earth behind after all. Isabel hadn't made it either, although none of them knew why. She had only shaken her head, given her brother a kiss on the cheek, and turned to walk away. They hadn't seen her since, and the young woman hoped, as always, that Isabel had landed somewhere safe where she could be happy.

Maria ceased to exist that day. She had gone from a teenager where everyone whispered about her strange mother and her absent father behind to back to being the only human on Earth who lived with aliens.

Her name now - for the last year and today anyway, was Josephine. Her boss and her coworkers called her Jo, and only very late at night or very early in the morning when she and the man she lived with were awake for different reasons, did anyone call her Maria.

He had nightmares sometimes. Nightmares of her dying. Of her leaving. Of him leaving. Or being taken. When he woke from one, he would wrap himself around her in their tiny shared bed and whisper her name - her old name - against her neck. She would hold him tightly to her and hum softly into his ear as she smoothed back his hair. His hair hadn't changed as much as her's had. He wore his short now, buzzed and she sometimes thought when she stroked his head that she missed the long spikes he had when she met. He stayed at home in their little one bedroom apartment, working as, of all things, a debt collector. She worked in a tiny, run down theater where she swept the floors and restocked the candy and got to watch as many movies as she wanted without paying. She sang, too, in a shabby coffee shop, accompanied by a guitar she had picked up cheap at a pawn shop. She wrote her own music, songs she had kept hidden for their first few years together, written on scraps of paper and in journals that didn't always come with them when they had to pick up and move in a hurry. Even when they first got here, and stayed, and finally let themselves think they might be able to stay, she still had kept it to herself. They didn't have much, which would have been something her teenage self would be upset about, but she didn't care as much anymore. After all, for the first two years after they left Roswell, she had generally slept in a car or curled up on a shabby motel bed that made her skin crawl to touch it. It was different now, anyway. She had one person still with her so she wasn't alone, and she had friends at work she could sometimes sit and have coffee with. She walked home after performing on nights like tonight, music still humming beneath her skin and making her whole skeleton buzz, where she felt like she was smothering when she was inside, and she had to be outside where she could breathe and see the sky for a little while.

She was happier in the dark, now. A fact that he had once told her made him sad. He said that his clearest memories of her before were of her blonde hair shining in the sunlight as she yelled at him about stealing her car.

She had smiled (laughs were harder to come by, now, she was so often tired) and told him that she wasn't blonde much anymore, and did that make him sad, too? He had rolled his eyes, and looked so much like he had as a teenager, that she had to pull him to her, and his smile, sharp and sudden as always, made her heart turn over.

Their lives were different and strange, now. They had been in this city for almost a year, which was their longest stop yet, but he said, and she agreed, that he didn't feel like they were being followed anymore. She wondered, standing there on the corner with her head tipped up to the distant stars, if that meant it would be safe to call her mother, soon.

She sent postcards home when she could - never signed, from all different cities and places, and once, a CD burned of the song that had woken her in the night to be written, leaving her scattering papers across the bed and the man asleep beside her about a car driving away, red shoes, and Dalmatian puppies - but it had been years since she'd spoken to Amy DeLuca, and the girl who was once Maria DeLuca missed her mother and her fierce love more than she ever could have believed when she was a teenager and living in a tiny dinky town that was famous for imaginary aliens.

She smiled faintly to herself as she crossed the street at last, ignoring the others shoving past her and the people she had to sidestep with practiced ease. Imaginary aliens had lead her here, after all, to real aliens, and a man who swore crankily at the coffee machine every morning in a threadbare pair of boxer shorts. Imaginary aliens had led her to this complicated, simple life, that she may never have learned to love if she had stayed who she had been as a teenager. Imaginary Aliens, she decided, with a smile up at the stars above her, would be the name of her next song.

END


End file.
